This month sees the opening of Scotland's new parliament, 3 years late and, at £430 million, eleven times over budget. For the past year viewers of Reporting Scotland and Newsnight Scotland have endured nightly highlights from the public enquiry set up to examine the debacle. The otiose Lord Fraser of Carmylie, in the chair and clearly revelling in his role as Witchfinder General, has spent more millions of public money revealing, well, what everyone knew in the first place — that the initial costs of the project (£40 million) would have funded an out-of-town shopping mall but not a parliament; that if you treble the size of a building, and change the specifications on a daily basis, then costs will soar; that a degree of project management can be helpful. Throw in terror-proofing, and bad luck — the deaths of both Donald Dewar, our first and finest though scatty First Minister, and of the brilliant but enigmatic Catalan architect Enric Miralles — to rob the parliament project of political and aesthetic direction.
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