You paid £431m … now pay to see it
AFTER huge costs to the taxpayer, there was fresh controversy for the new Holyrood parliament last night: visitors will have to pay to see it. Members of the public, having handed over £431m, must now pay a further £3.50 to tour the unique architecture.
The news emerged on the last day of the parliamentary term after Tommy Sheridan, Scottish Socialist party leader, raised it at first minister's question time. He said taxpayers were being "double-charged".

BBC NEWS: "Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan also paid tribute to the teenager whom he had known for a number of years.

He said Fusilier Gentle, of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, was a fantastic boy and a man of whom the local community could be proud.

Fusilier Gentle's mother Rose has made an angry public attack on the prime minister and Defence Minister Geoff Hoon over the death of her son.

The young soldier from the Pollok area of Glasgow was killed on Monday by an improvised explosive device while on mobile patrol in Basra.

Two other soldiers were also injured on the day the US-led administration handed over power to the new Iraqi government.

Mr Blair's sympathy message to Mr Gentle's family came in a statement on the latest developments in Iraq.

Mr Sheridan said Fusilier Gentle's mother had spoken volumes.

He went on: 'She is a grief stricken mother but she is still able to see through her tears the irrelevance of the Iraq war to ordinary people's lives, and that fact that young men like Gordon should not be there in the first place.

'All that remains to be said is bring the rest of these young men home now.

'He was a young lad who did what he thought was right, and he used to help organise the Pollok gala day.'"

Glasgow has been ranked as the poorest city in the UK by researchers who have mapped out a "census atlas".
BBC News Online
Leader of the Scottish Socialists Tommy Sheridan described the north-south divide as a "damning indictment" of the failure of the executive to tackle poverty, when after five years Glasgow was "sinking into the poverty trap".
He said: "All we get from ministers like Margaret Curran are platitudes and buzzwords about tackling poverty when the research shows that the situation facing Scotland's poor is getting worse."

North-south gap growing, says report
Press Association
Tommy Sheridan, the Scottish Socialist party national convenor and MSP for Glasgow, said the findings were a "damning indictment" of the failure of the Scottish Executive to tackle poverty.
He said: "Scottish Executive ministers are now going to have to explain to the people of Scotland why it is that they have opposed abolishing the council tax, the introduction of free school meals and the abolishing of prescription charges when these are measures which would make a very real start in tackling chronic poverty in Scotland."

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Comment | No time for numpties: "Is it independence that has taken a nosedive, or just the SNP? Or is it simply John Swinney's fault? The former Scottish Amicable man has long been described as a charisma-free zone. Meanwhile, there are new kids on the indy block - the Scottish Socialist party and the Greens. Independence is not the major plank of Tommy Sheridan's fast-growing bunch of outspoken working-class MSPs, but his party has made an impact in the sprawling housing schemes of Edinburgh and Glasgow in a way the kilted caricature of the SNP Highlander never could." Lesley Riddoch in The Guardian.