Thread by @LucyHunterB

25 years ago I joined the team putting the law in place to establish the Scottish Parliament, and then I led the team putting in place the arrangements for the first elections. At the time, it felt like the privilege of my life.

This morning I sat in Committee and watched the performance of a government minister which I would describe without hestitation as shameful. Speaking notes that showed contempt for reasoned debate, and contempt for any group (women, here) getting in the government's way.

In a setting where the Parliament had allowed the debate to be rushed, confused and confusing and constructed to minimise effective scrutiny and holding the government to account, and the most ardent supporters of changing the law were too cowardly to put their position forward.

There were bright spots - some MSPs trying to salvage something like a decent process from the ashes of one which has burnt to the ground the ambitions of the many people who campaigned for Holyrood exist.

But the process is stacked against them. Most depressing was a Minister who appears now to be actually allergic to saying the word "woman" and responded to concrete concerns with sometimes contradictory, often absurd technocratic blancmange.

Whatever sort of victory the government achieves here, it won't be a moral one.

Or one for the Scottish Parliament, which emerges tarnished from this process.

And it could break your heart.

Normal more analytic service may be resumed later.

One problem with the current system is that you see this - support at Stage 1 for general principles then quoted to assert the specific detail in the bill was supported and resist scrutiny. This is how the @ScottishLabour support at Stage 1 has been used in committee at stage 2.

Points for moral panic. I've also had two separate accusations of pearl-clutching in response to this thread. Bog standard sexist insult, just in case anyone else is inclined to demonstrate their grasp of that idiom.

I wrote this very quickly in between meetings yesterday evening, and had no idea it would get this sort of reaction. My notifications are now a bit wild, So I'm going to miss things, and not be on Twitter too much to avoid the distraction./

But a footnote in daylight. There are not easy solutions to making the *current* parliament work better. There's one basic one though, I think. You have to believe that there are people on both sides of Scotland's constitutional divide who would really like it to, and I do.

Probably the most depressing response. I need to break it to the tweeter and the four people who liked it that the thread has attracted lots of supportive comments from independence supporters who would like the Scottish Parliament to work better for them in the here and now.