You know how it is sometimes the smallest irritants make the biggest racket. Step forward the Taxpayers' Alliance, a London-based pressure group devoted to cutting taxes and targeting government waste (with a sideline in Europe-bashing). Among its small band of devoted adherents are assorted members of the Adam Smith Institute and other right-wing "think tanks", including one run by the former head of the Institute of Directors, and a number of boardroom luminaries.
Two of its three founders met and bonded as Conservative student activists. (One of them defected on the grounds the Tories weren't sufficiently devoted to the free market any more.) In short, we should not be tempted to confuse the Taxpayers' Alliance with the peasants' revolt.
The reason it has impinged on Scottish radars is that among its latest scatter-gun complaints about public expenditure is an outburst about the possibility of Holyrood buying a piece of neon-based art for its fledgling collection by the late (and globally renowned) artist, Ian Hamilton Finlay. While it pains me to give the alliance any further publicity - a commodity it craves and breathlessly records on its website - it's worth repeating the quote it produced on the possible purchase: "It's a disgrace that our political elite are so out of touch that they think this is a good use of anyone's money. Why are we paying so much for these politicians to satisfy their expensive arty tastes?"
Okay, how can this bunch get so much so wrong? Let me count the ways. From its inception, it was mooted that Holyrood's building, itself an award-winning architectural icon, could serve as an exciting addition to Scotland's gallery spaces, with the added bonus of tens of thousands of national and international visitors touring the premises every year.
At an early stage in the Holyrood project, an independent art consultancy was given the job of identifying opportunities. Later, the all-party art steering group, far from pandering to their own "expensive arty tastes", sought the advice of an external advisory group, the most recent members of which were Richard Calvocoressi, former director of the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, artist Alison Watt, and the poet and playwright, Liz Lochhead. There is also a professional curator dealing directly with the arts community and responsible for setting up temporary exhibitions.
Just possibly that range of expertise brings a little more intellectual rigour to bear on matters creative than the Taxpayers' Alliance. As it happens, the new advisory group will not meet until next month, so there is no new acquisition currently under review. But even if there were, why should that be considered problematic?
Doubtless we could save thousands by not showcasing the best of contemporary Scottish art. For that matter, we could have saved millions by housing the parliament in an office block with Boots prints on the wall. The best small-minded country in the world.
To use Holyrood as an extra resource for advertising Scottish talent should surely be a matter for celebration for all those who turned girning about the cost of the building into a new art form in its own right. Within Holyrood's walls you can now see work from some of Scotland's most lauded artists, photographers and designers; paintings, installations, photographs, tapestries, poetry.
Much of the artwork on display was indeed commissioned or purchased by Holyrood, but there are many beautiful gifts from other parliaments. Equally, the stated commitment to Scottish art has paid unexpected dividends in loans and bequests from the Aniston stones preserved from the 1707 parliament, to the Paolozzi bronze of the late John Smith.
People are proud to have their work in Holyrood and Holyrood is rightly proud of its burgeoning collection, not least in the homage it pays to the current vibrancy of the Scottish arts. The exhibition programme for this year alone has mounted events as diverse as the World Press Photo Exhibition, and a history of Scotland's suffragette movement. The building's intriguing spaces have played host to book launches, festivals and musical events, while special performances of the National Theatre's acclaimed Black Watch were used to herald the new session in May.
All of these activities reflect Scotland's acquiring of an appealing new venue and an important synergy between the business of government and the encouragement of creativity. In addition to which, it makes Holyrood work full-time for its living on a year-round basis; again surely a reason for applauding enterprise rather than another round of serial whingeing.
The people who are comprehensively out of touch here are not those who would utilise Scottish art to enhance Scotland's new parliament, but those whose creativity is only applied to accountancy. Let them frame their bloody tax rebates, hang them and haud their wheesht.
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