"Is that it?" asked Anas Sarwar following John Swinney’s snoration about his Programme for Government. By extension, I had the same response to this Parliamentary Occasion as a whole. Is this it?

Is this the level to which Holyrood has led us? Once upon a time, we were told a devolved Parliament would bring forth Scotland’s brightest and best; undiscovered talent, brimming with fresh ideas.

Maybe in other hands it could have happened and I hope it still can because Scotland urgently needs the politics of creativity and hope.

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With each year that slips away, that prospect grows more distant to the point at which the highlight of this latest Programme for Government is a promise to bring down rail fares, nine months after the same Ministers raised them.

It’s not exactly the new Enlightenment.

However, it was the complete lack of vision in Swinney’s speech that was depressing. In contrast, there were platitudes by the barrow-load.

"The country that I love"… "a government that cares deeply for Scotland" …"a government that always strives for what is best for Scotland" and so on through the political kailyard.

Can he not spare us this stuff?

It would be a very odd government that "did not strive for what is best" even if it had strange ways of going about it. There is something cloyingly patronising to imply, to link, such protestations to the realities which a Programme for Government is supposed to address.

Swinney brought the event........

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