The Scottish Parliament

I attended a meeting today at the Scottish Parliament. For those of you outwith Scotland, this building had its fair share of controversy while it was being built. I think the ground for the project was broken around the time I moved to Scotland. People didn’t like the site, the project was well over cost and well over time. The design - oh my! This was never going to be a copy of Westminster and why should it be? This was meant to be a building for a re-convened Scottish Parliament that last sat in 1707 (a key difference from Wales and Northern Ireland who now have assemblies, not parliaments). For me, all those concerns melted away when the doors were finally opened.  

Edwin Morgan, the first Scottish makar (like a poet laureate) wrote a poem for the opening fittingly called Open the Doors. I give you a later makar, Liz Lochhead, reading the poem at the opening of the Parliament (Mr. Morgan was too ill to attend in person). 

“Leave symmetry to the cemetary.”

“What do the people want of the place? They want it to be filled with thinking persons as open and adventurous as its architecture.
A nest of fearties is what they do not want.
A symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want.
A phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want.
And perhaps above all the droopy mantra of ‘it wizny me’ is what they do not want.”


I love this place.