ASK me no questions and I will tell you no lies. So please, nobody ask whether this week’s FMQs was good television. I don’t enjoy criticising such an important symbol of our democracy, so I’ll just put it this way: don’t fret about catching up if you missed it.
Go out and enjoy the sunshine. Hug your children. Clean your skirting boards. De-fluff your tumble drier. Thank the goddess above that you were given the blessing of not having to endure that 45 minutes of monotone, skull-crushing banality.
A lot of the blame for this week’s FMQs snooze-fest lies with Ruth Davidson. I find myself in the unusual position of looking back with great fondness on Jackson Carlaw’s brief stint as Scottish Tory leader. But Davidson is back, and now we’ve all got to suffer. She asks the first question and, as such, sets the tone for the rest of the proceedings.
The tone she set on Thursday made the old internet dial-up tune seem positively musical in comparison.
In keeping with her belated rebranding as a ‘’grown-up politician’’ that we discussed last week, Davidson again zoned into the hot-button of issue of the day. No, not the global climate change crisis nor even the comparatively low-level disaster of Brexit – but numeracy in schools.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon slams Ruth Davidson for 'legendary flip-flopping'
I should declare an interest at this point – I hated maths. At school, my interest in maths extended only as far as what rude words I could spell on the calculator and the destructive pleasure of scratching out ‘’Kirsty LUVs Ryan 4EVA’’ on the desk with a compass.
Ruth Davidson, on the other hand, LOVES numeracy – except when it comes to pesky newspapers doing the sums on the Tory dark money scandal, of course.
‘’Can the First Minister tell us, how much has numeracy attainment improved or declined in our schools since she took office?’’ What followed was an assault on the neurological receptors of everybody with the misfortune to be witnessing this swot-off.
Acronyms were deployed from both Sturgeon and Davidson with alarming speed and intensity.
‘’OECD’’ fired the First Minister.
‘’SSLN’’ Davidson shot back.
‘’CCFE levels of data’’ ‘’PISA’’ Oh PIS-off, FMQs – you’re killing us here.
Once the alphabet soup-slinging was finally over, then came the buzzwords. "No meaningful conclusions on upwards or downwards trends can be reached" claimed Davidson.
"We are closing the attainment gap" said the First Minister.
"We are losing the data we need", replied Ruth Davidson. "WE ARE LOSING THE WILL TO LIVE!" screamed the viewing public.
When Nicola Sturgeon accused Ruth Davidson of "flip-flopping" on school assessments for children I punched the air in jubilation. We were back on familiar territory. This is a language everybody understands. So legendary is Davidson’s tendency to face both ways when it comes to policy, that we could all pass an exam on it with flying colours.
WATCH: Ruth Davidson slated for 'legendary flip-flopping' at FMQs
The exchanges continued, but Ruth Davidson had lost the room. Half the chamber was nursing a stonking hangover after the hottest day of the year so far on Wednesday. She carried on shouting "NUMERCY! DATA! NUMBERS! NUMBERS!" but the only number MSPs were interested in was the one on the clock, showing that this hellfire they’d found themselves in would soon be over.
“You might want to listen to this!” Davidson shouted at the restless backbenchers.
Reader, they didn’t.
Ruth Davidson sat back down, and the nation breathed a sigh of relief. The learned Brian Taylor said afterwards that the line of questioning was "clinical". Which for those not familiar with Brian’s lingo means ‘’a waste of bloody time”. His journalistic chums agreed, saying that the exchanges were “hard to understand” and offered “no clarity”.
So at least we cleared that up.
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