Wings Over Scotland | Not So Octopus

Alert readers will have noticed something of a furore in recent days around a boneheaded Scottish Greens candidate (as if there were any other kind) calling for the complete abolition of prisons.

So far Kate Nevens – who on the latest polling has a reasonable chance of being elected on the list – has resisted calls to step down, which is probably for the best as, incredibly, her replacement would be even worse.

With the implosion of Your Party concentrating the nutter vote firmly in Green hands, the next term of the Scottish Parliament is set to feature the worst array of MSPs in Holyrood’s history, with almost everyone in the SNP with any sort of ability or experience resigning to be replaced by hyper-obedient young party drones, while the opposition are mostly putting forward the same old faces who’ve been such utter failures for the last 20 years.

It’s a grim prospect, but we do have a solution to propose.

No, wait, hear us out. The current election will usher in dozens of useless candidates nobody likes, largely by default for want of any better alternatives. We know nothing about most of these people. The Greens may get two list MSPs per region, but see what you can find out about most of their second-placed list candidates – it’s nothing.

Here, for example, is the entirety of the Greens’ web page for their #2 list candidate in Central And Lothians West, Claire Williams.

And here’s pretty much everything we could find out about her:

As far as we can tell she has no personal site and no social media presence except a Facebook page, which mostly contains notifications about upcoming roadworks.

This is the most substantive or personal statement we’ve been able to find from Cllr Williams on any subject:

Good luck with your informed voting decision. We’re using Cllr Williams purely as a typical example of a list candidate, not picking on her particularly, because there’s nothing to pick on, other than the basic assumption that she supports all the repulsive policies of her party in general.

So we’re about to elect a whole herd of pigs in pokes without the slightest notion of whether any of them might be capable MSPs. (And let’s face it, the odds aren’t good.) If we had a Squid Game parliament we’d at least know that they were good at SOMETHING.

The 129 survivors would have demonstrated intelligence, co-operation, adaptability and strength under pressure – all fine traits for anyone, let alone politicians, a job for which there are no qualifications. (Indeed, most of the things that qualify someone as a good and useful human being, like the ability to think for yourself, are an active hindrance in politics.)

And it’s not a brute-force contest either. To win at Squid Game requires a wide and diverse range of skills, as well as the bravery to enter in the first place. You’d know your representatives REALLY wanted that seat, not just because they lacked the talent to get any other job. (There’d be no financial prize other than their normal wages, of course.)

We already know that Squid Game is box-office, compared to the current election which most people already desperately wish would just be over. Voters would actually care. Put it on pay-per-view and you could generate many millions of pounds for hard-pressed public services, as well as improving the quality of your public servants a thousand-fold.

There are no downsides. Convince us we’re wrong.