Policy Research Media Morhamburn

“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.”

Believe it or not, attending First Ministers Questions was probably not the most outlandish thing I had done all summer. In fact, I had herded and milked cows. I had peddled a Rickshaw through Hanoi city centre. I had ridden an elephant. It was all part of an ‘adventure-travel’ show, based on the US programme “The Amazing Race.” I had raced around the world, crossing continents and 6 different countries, and now I could finally have a quiet sit-down in an office in the Canongate. This was not entirely the case. First of all, I was not viewed with as much admiration and awe in the office as my nascent celebrity ego would have liked. Everyone here had studied, visited or worked in the countries I had raced through. My efforts to finally appear worldly, sophisticated and well-travelled had been in vain. Similarly, life at Morhamburn was far from sedate. ‘Racing’ is at heart not particularly complex. You just ‘race’ as fast as you can, hopefully faster than the other competitors. Here, the goals were changing constantly, day after day. Instead of just getting my head down and running, I had to be aware of Parliamentary business, changes in clients’ needs, regional, national and international news stories. If the pace of life while on the show had been fast, it was ultimately all artificial. Moreover, which ever way you look at it, it was for essentially frivolous means. The matters I was dealing with in the office or in Parliament actually meant something to millions of real people. There was no second take. There was no camera that could be switched off to halt the flow of political life. There was no elephant to get me down to parliament on a wet Thursday morning. It seemed that the race was just beginning…