Despite detesting the digital age with every cell in my body, I do have a fondness for a finely-used emoji.

I’d genuinely cheer if some underground group set itself up - the Internet Liberation League, perhaps - and took out every data-centre on Earth. But I’d miss emojis. Principally because they make me laugh.

I especially enjoy a well-deployed set of emoji eyeballs as a sign of staggered disbelief - the response you might have towards anything said by Kemi Badenoch, or is it Bad-enough?

Understandably, then, I was taken by a new emoji that’s doing the rounds. You see, Scots, when discussing the brutal price hike in train fares, have been looking for a suitable emoji for "highway robbery".

Read more by Neil Mackay

None exists, so in the make-do-and-mend spirit of the age, they’re using the Ninja emoji: a masked man clad in black wielding what could be taken for a flintlock pistol (though it’s actually a kendo stick). Good, eh?

Highway robbery, however, isn’t being committed by nationalised ScotRail. This stick-up job is the work of our dear, selfless, public-spirited government ministers.

What’s so particularly sickening about this, is that MSPs - like their Westminster pals - live pretty free on the public teat.

It’s cold out these days, so if you want to warm up, take a glance at the Scottish Parliament’s website page entitled "MSP travel and expenses". It’ll certainly make your blood boil enough to ease autumn’s chills.

There, you’ll see MSPs claiming for just about everything you can’t claim for when you go to work. When you get the train to work, do you get it paid for you? Well, MSPs do.

I looked at........

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