Bono slams new Scottish parliament

'No place to fish,' laments roving rock pundit

by John Murphy

The New Scottish Parliament™ — nicknamed “Holyrood” — opened this week under a hailstorm of criticism from celebrity critics. Sting laconically referred to the cutting-edge architectural statement as “sh*t”, while roving rock pundit Bono — returning from interceding in the genocidal war between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Congolese Democratic Republic — was extremely disappointed to find "no place to fish”.

Holyrood: Bono disapointed by lack of fishing “I was promised upturned boats, holy roods and some guy called Alex who knew about salmon," moaned the part-time musician. “I haven't got time to be jetting up to Scotland on a wild goose chase. People are dying in Sudan, you know. Dying. People. Sudan. That's right — dying.”

The controversy is not confined to internationally-renowned political troubleshooters. One MSP complained about the design of the parliament's offices being inspired by a monk’s cell, “If I’d wanted to spend time behind bars I would have stood for Mayor of London while banging prostitutes and concocting false alibis for libel trials," the member for South Rockall told The Rockall Times.

Another blow befell the parliament on Wednesday when a survey revealed 89 per cent of the public "didn’t know" what the acronym MSP meant, with another 11 per cent offering “no idea”. One woman fumbled: “Isn’t it some sort of spastic?” and a further 23 per cent thought it was “a kind of mind-expanding drug”. The same survey revealed that 80 per cent of Scots thought that the devolved parliament had done “bugger all” for them so far, with 20 per cent admitting that this was “the first they’d heard about it”.

Lord Fraser is due to present his report on Wednesday into why the exciting new parliament building went 4200 per cent over budget. He has preliminarily said that it was mainly due to MSPs wanting widescreen TVs in their cells. However, the SNP supremo Alex Salmon was quick to disagree: “That’s nonsense. The imported Italian minibars also had quite an impact on the balance sheet as did the special order of Hebridean shortbread hand-stamped with the parliament's crest, the provision of a bagpipers' lounge and bar area and a £1.2m state-of-the-art Scottish-English-Scottish translating mainframe."

At the opening of the parliament the Labour leader and First Minister Jack McConnell outlined his legislative programme for the year ahead. The first few months will be spent on bagpipe-related issues, then it’s on to kilts and haggis until the year is out. Conservative leader David McLetchie said that McConnell should be concentrating on things that were really important to the people — like specialist schools — but McConnell pointed out that they were planning to open two specialist bagpipe schools in the spring. Jim Wallace, Scottish LibDem leader also criticised the programme: “There was no mention of Robert the Bruce or William Wallace,” he lamented, staring mournfully at a signed picture of Mel Gibson.

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Bono slams new Scottish parliament

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