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Posted: Tuesday 30 October 2007

Talking Points: Question Time

MSPs Take Questions from Hutchesons' Pupils

Jenna Alexander [S6] reports.

It certainly was time for questions for a host of MSPs in Hutchie’s annual political debate. Brian Taylor, BBC political correspondent, chaired the event at Hutchesons’ as part of the S6 Talking Points series. The lively line-up of MSPs included Nicola Sturgeon (Deputy Leader, SNP), Annabel Goldie (Leaders, Conservatives), Ken Macintosh (Labour, and Shadow Minister for Schools) and Ross Finnie (Liberal Democrats) and they had a lot of explaining to do! The MSPs didn’t get off lightly as the Hutchie pupils grilled them with taxing questions about the Iraq war and Scotland’s binge drinking culture. It was informative and at times heated, particularly when Nicola Sturgeon and Ken Macintosh feuded over the shambolic voting system in the May elections.

Brian Taylor was a fine moderator, cracking jokes and controlling the MSPs. He was also good at bringing them back to earth when they started to rant. For example when Nicola Sturgeon was talking about the farce that was the Scottish election, Brian quickly reminded her that it was her party which wrote “Alex Salmond for First Minister” at the top of their ballot, disillusioning the voters. A roar of laughter from the audience met this before Nicola added, “Annabel has just realised her name begins with an ‘A’ so she’s going to try that tactic now,” which again left the audience in stitches.

Question Time gave S6 pupils an insight into politics and the banter between MSPs was like that in parliament. Not only did the students look like they were enjoying themselves, but so did the MSPs.

As usual the Hutchie pupils did have a complaint – one hour just wasn’t long enough!

Tags: Modern Studies, S6, Secondary